


Getting it

by Citlali



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 14:38:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4610499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Citlali/pseuds/Citlali
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt doesn't want to be anyone's inspiration.  He doesn't want to be anyone's project.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Getting it

The music wasn't obnoxiously loud.  The background noise was of people having fun.  They'd won the case for their client.  It was a good night. 

It was a good night until Foggy groaned and Matt sat up a little straighter, suddenly alert.  “What?”

There was no time for Foggy to answer, the chair Karen had recently vacated ( _someone has to be alert in the morning_ ) scraped backwards.  A woman sat, a little uncoordinated, smelled like rye and coke and floral perfume and ceaser salad for lunch and cats.  Short.  Medium build.  A fairly large size purse.  It thumped heavy against the table.  A scent; iron?  A handgun?  Loose change jingled and as a puff of air escaped through the zipper there was a strong smell of stale breath mints.    

"Hey Foggy, its great seeing you again!" Foggy stood up as she gave him a hug and then stretched onto her tip toes to kiss his cheek.   Then she turned towards Matt and placed a hand on his shoulder.  

“Hi Matt.  Do you know who I am?”  The volume of her voice increased as though he were deaf and not blind, and she pronounced her words carefully.  He heard an exasperated sigh from Foggy as he sat back down.  

Her voice sounded familiar, but not enough to place a name.  He knew she was part of the DA’s team and she apparently knew Foggy.  Should he recognize her from Columbia?  

Matt smiled and held out his hand.  “Sorry, I don’t know your name.  Your with the DA office?”  

She shook his hand, holding on a bit longer than necessary.  “Yes.  Nancy Cunningham.  We had a class together at Columbia.  Do you remember me?”   

Out of how many classes and how many students?  He felt Foggy’s knee bump his under the table.  "No, sorry."  Matt responded politely.   

"I was really impressed with your closing statement today."

"Thanks."

"How do you prepare?"

"Uhm, same as anyone I guess."  Matt said easily.  

“I saw you using something at the table.  Do you write your notes in Braille?”  She asked. “Doesn't that take a long time?”  

He understood people being curious.  People were always curious.  It was usually okay and he didn’t mind answering questions.  It was better than being stared at, at least.  But, there was something in the way Nancy asked that set him on edge.  The fact that he didn’t answer right away didn’t seem to deter her any.  

“What was that thing you were using called?”

"A slate and stylus."  

"How do you know where to poke the dots into?"

Matt frowned.  "I'm used to it?"

“That's amazing.  You really are an inspiration.”  Nancy reached across the table and placed her hand on Matt’s arm again.   

“Okay.”   _You’re an inspiration._  He’d heard it before from the same people who in the next breath often declared they would have given up on living long ago if they were in his shoes.  This.  This was the kind of attention he hated.

Foggy's arm brushed against Matt's back as he stretched.  "Well.  It's getting late.  We should be going."

"It is so awesome that the two of you decided to keep working together after college."

"Foggy's an excellent lawyer.  I'm lucky to have him as a partner."  Matt agreed.

Nancy took another sip of her beverage.  "I imagine he's pretty useful too.  Foggy was a legend in the learning strategies class."  

The extreme and sudden reaction coming off his friend stirred Matt's curiosity.  Not did Foggy abruptly tense, but his heartbeat was three times as loud as it had been moments before. "The what class?"

"Learning Strategies."  She enunciated as though he hadn't heard the word.  "It was part of the accessibility program to encourage integration.  Foggy was amazing with the disabled students, but I guess you already know that.  He talked about you all the time."

Matt leaned back and ignored Foggy's knee pressed up against his.   

"We really need to be going."  Foggy insisted.

"What class?"  Matt asked again, this time towards Foggy.

Foggy released a sigh of resignation but he didn't relax any.  "It was an elective in the Disability Studies program.”

"Right."  He tried to block out the sound of Foggy’s heart racing beside him and turned back to Nancy.  “So, he talked about me?”

"Oh yeah, it was really useful to hear his insight on the challenges people like you face on a day to day basis. The class was great, but I wasn’t nearly as passionate about it as Foggy was.”

The conversation lapsed for a moment and Matt heard Foggy's heartbeat jump again. Matt clenched his fist in response to the tension in the air.  _Relax,_ he told himself,  _nothing is about to happen._

Foggy stood up abruptly.  "I hate to cut things short but we've got an early day tomorrow.  Bye, Nancy.  Great catching up with you."  Foggy said.  She hugged him again.  And then Foggy stood.  Matt felt the hesitation in his friend's movements.  Foggy reached forward as though to touch his arm and then pulled back.  His breath hitched slightly.  

"Can we talk?"  Foggy asked.  His voice was slightly higher than normal.  Stress.    

"Of course."  Fair is fair.  It wasn't so long ago he was begging the same thing.  He wasn't sure if he wanted to listen.   He followed Foggy outside.  Foggy would explain and Matt would listen, but he couldn't get rid of the heavy feeling in his gut that had lodged there since Nancy had said ' _he talked about you all the time'_.    

"So."  Matt wasn't certain how to start.  He decided to just get right down to it.  "You talked about me in your disability studies class."  

Foggy's heart rate spiked again.  "I may have mentioned you a couple of times.  When the subject was about accessibility issues."

"If you wanted my perspective you could have asked for it.  I wouldn't have minded."   _Yes I would have, a_ _nd I would have never confided in you_ _._    Matt started walking.  He wasn't walking away, it was just walking and Foggy fell into step and kept pace.  "You could have at least warned me you were using me as your research project."  

"You weren't a research project.  Alright, sometimes I asked you stuff specifically related to a class subject.  But, you knew about my uncle being a butcher and you asked me about processed meat once."

"Not the same thing, Foggy." 

"Right.  I know.  Sorry.  I asked you because you’re the expert on what it's like to be you.”

This was going nowhere, and it was a ridiculous thing to get upset about anyhow.  So what if Foggy talked about his struggles with accessibility services in a classroom full of students studying disability law?  So what if Foggy never told him about it?  He neglected to tell Foggy about a whole lot more important things than that.  What right did he have to feel hurt, or betrayed, or angry?  "Forget it, it's not a big deal."  Matt insisted.  

“Yeah, it is a big deal.  You're mad at me.”  And this time Foggy grabbed Matt’s arm and pulled him to a stop.  Matt had to force himself not to pull away.  He listened to Foggy's breath huffing as he considered what to say next.  “I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was taking the disability legal studies classes.   I guess I kind of felt weird about it and I didn't want you to feel weird about it." 

"I don't appreciate being used as a case study."

"That's exactly what I wanted to avoid.  You weren't a case study, Matt, and I shouldn't have talked about you in class without your permission.  I noticed when there was stuff at school that you couldn't use because no one thinks about what it’s like to navigate the world without sight.  You never said anything most of the time and I kind of thought that might be because you were so used to it, or maybe because you didn't want to ask for help.  You kind of have this whole independence thing going on.  So, I asked you about things to get your perspective on how it could be fixed to be made accessible.  Usually I took my concerns straight to student services.  I never did it to earn extra credit.”

“The admissions website.”  Matt said softly.  He heard Foggy’s clothes rustle as he shrugged.  He remembered being frustrated with the website while trying to sign up for courses.  Beyond frustrated.  When he'd first contacted student services about it they offered to assign him an assistant.  That wasn't the solution he'd been hoping for.  The admissions website had been impossible to navigate with his screen reader because there were no headings in it and when he’d finally given up and asked for Foggy’s help, he remembered Foggy asking a ton of questions on what would make the website easier to use.  Inexplicably a few days after that he got a call from student services asking him the same thing.  And then there’d been the snow clearing issue.  And the piece of paper typically taped on the classroom door to notify students of a scheduling change that one day started including Braille tags.  How many other things could he think of off the top of his head?

The more he thought about it the more he realized how often issues tended to resolve themselves soon after he encountering them or how he would coincidently receive a call from student services asking if there were any improvements he would like to see made in campus accessibility. 

This revelation didn't make him feel any better; he was proud of his independence. He'd always taken for granted that Foggy was different.  That was why learning that Foggy took a class in disability studies and used him as an example in it felt so much like a betrayal.   “I never asked you to solve my problems for me.”  

“None of those things were your problems, Matt.  They were problems with the environment that needed to be fixed.”

How many times had he come up against something only to be treated like he was the problem that needed to be fixed?

_Foggy got it._

One of the things, in fact the first thing, that attracted him to Foggy was that Foggy was never afraid to acknowledge that he was blind and yet still treated him like a regular person.  He never made him feel awkward about describing what he was doing or reading out signs and billboards, and interpreting action sequences in the movies they watched.  

Foggy’s hand was still wrapped around his arm, urging him to stay and listen.  He reached up and touched his fingers to Foggy’s.  

Matt forgave him. 

 

  

 


End file.
